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Only a few days ago, NASA announced that its Chandra X-ray Observatory was experiencing an unexpected downtime. The spacecraft has been forced to go into automated safe mode, which is designed to do if it detects that something is wrong. NASA noticed the problem Wednesday and announced the unfortunate status of the satellite on Friday.
In a new update from the Chandra team, NASA reveals that it has understood what is wrong with the observatory and that everything is fine once again. Coincidentally, the error was caused by one of Chandra's gyroscopes that he uses for orientation, which also explains the fact that the aging Hubble is currently safe.
"The cause of Chandra's safe mode on October 10 has now been understood and the operations team has managed to bring the spacecraft back to its normal scoring mode," the update said. "The safe mode was caused by a problem in one of Chandra's gyroscopes, which resulted in a 3-second period of erroneous data, causing the computer to calculate an incorrect value for the momentum of the spaceship. The erroneous moment indication then triggered the safe mode. "
This "3-second period of incorrect data" was enough for the spacecraft to think that something could really be wrong and decided to go into safe mode so its engineers could check. Fortunately, it seems that the problem is minor and that, therefore, the satellite is not put aside.
This is obviously very good news for the Chandra team and for NASA, but it is clear that the spacecraft is entering its twilight. The satellite is 19, which may not sound long, but it is starting to grow in age. The observatory was only designed to last five years when it was launched, but NASA expanded its mission when it became clear that the satellite needed more work.
For now, at least, Chandra will resume his normal workload and we will cross our fingers to make sure that his downtime is not a symptom of a bigger problem looming.
Image Source: NASA / CXC / SAO
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